By Way of Introduction

You can lead a horse to the polls, but you can't make him vote. They would have to modify the booth to accommodate his horse shape.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Brooklyn Bridge for Sale

Dateline Georgia: Bill Looman, a businessman in Waco, Georgia has put signs on his company trucks stating “New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.” He says he blames "the people in power" for the economic situation, but his sign doesn't mention the Republican-controlled House - the people that are responsible for the budget, the deficit, and every law we've ever passed in the United States. Nor does he mention that the banks refuse to lend the trillions of dollars they've got sitting in their vaults. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and call Mr. Looman disingenuous.

Unfortunately, I don't think he's alone in his plans to hold out on hiring until Mr. or Mrs. Republican is elected in 2012. I'm not big on conspiracy theories, mostly because people are just not that good at keeping juicy secrets. Or even lame secrets, for that matter.

Still, the plan seems to be to block anything and everything that might help the economy so that President Obama gets blamed and the Republicans can then ride in on their platinum horses and announce that tax cuts for the wealthy will fix the economy. At that point, the banks will start lending that money they've been hoarding (YOUR money, I might point out, if you are a taxpayer and your bank was bailed out) and it will appear as though they were right all along.


And most of us will fall for it. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Minor Observations

A quote from Texas Governor Rick Perry, referencing a campaign contribution from Merck Pharmaceuticals. "It was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them," Perry said. "I raised about $30 million, and if you're saying that I can be bought for 5,000, I'm offended."

A real straight-up dude.
In fact, he's received closer to $30,000 from Merck over the years, but who's counting? The point most people seem to have missed here is the way he replied to the suggestion that he had been bought by the drug company, and that their contributions to his campaigns led him to issue an executive order requiring the HPV vaccine for young girls in Texas. Note that he doesn't argue that he can be bought, but instead objects to the implication that he could have been bought for such a paltry sum. It takes way more than $5,000 to buy Rick Perry. Apparently, it takes more like $30,000.